“So . . . Thomas moves into the center lane, the turning lane—it’s not a passing lane—and Tommy puts on his blinker, not knowing that both his taillights are covered with wet, sticky snow, which his father had failed to clear off at the same time his father failed to clear the rear window. No one behind Thomas’s car can see his directional signal, or even the taillights or the brake lights. The car is not visible—or it is visible only at the last second—to anyone approaching it from behind.
“Meanwhile, Marion says: ‘Don’t turn here, Tommy—it’s safer up ahead, at the lights.’
“ ‘You want him to make a U-turn and get a ticket, Marion?’ Ted asked his wife.
“ ‘I don’t care if he gets a ticket, Ted—it’s safer to turn at the lights,’ Marion said.
“ ‘Break it up, you two,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t want to get a ticket, Mom,’ the boy added.
“ ‘Okay—so turn here, then,’ Marion told him.
“ ‘Better just do it, Tommy—don’t sit here,’ Ted said.
“ ‘Great backseat driving,’ Timothy commented. Then Timmy noticed that his brother had cranked the wheels to the left while he was still waiting to turn. ‘You cut your wheels too soon again,’ Tim told him.
“ ‘It’s because I thought I was going to turn, and then I thought I wasn’t, asshole!’ Thomas said.
“ ‘Tommy, don’t call your brother an asshole, please,’ Marion told her son.
“ ‘At least not in front of your mother,’ Ted added.
“ ‘No—that’s not what I mean, Ted,’ Marion told her husband. ‘I mean that he shouldn’t call his brother an asshole—period.’
“ ‘You hear that, asshole?’ Timothy asked his brother.
“ ‘Timmy, please . . .’ Marion said.
“ ‘You can turn after this snowplow,’ Ted told his son.
“ ‘Dad, I know. I’m the driver,’ the seventeen-year-old said.
“But suddenly the interior of their car was flooded with light—it was the headlights of the car coming up on them from behind. It was a station wagon full of college kids from New Jersey. They’d never been in Colorado before. It’s conceivable that, in New Jersey, there’s no difference between turning lanes and passing lanes.
“Anyway, the college kids thought they were passing. They didn’t see (until the last second) the car that was waiting to turn left in front of them—as soon as the snowplow, in the oncoming lane, passed by. And so Thomas’s car was rear-ended, and, because Thomas had already turned his wheels, his car was pushed into the lane of oncoming traffic, which in this case consisted of a very large snowplow, moving about forty-five miles per hour. The college kids said later that they thought their station wagon was doing about fifty.”
“Jesus . . .” Eddie said.
“The snowplow cut Thomas’s car almost perfectly in half,” Ted went on. “Thomas was killed by the steering column of the car he was driving—it crushed his chest. Tommy died instantly. And—for about twenty minutes—Ted was trapped in the backseat, where he was seated directly behind Thomas. Ted couldn’t see Thomas, although Ted knew that Tommy was dead because Marion could see Tommy, and although she would never use the ‘dead’ word, she kept repeating to her husband, ‘Oh, Ted—Tommy’s gone. Tommy’s gone. Can you see Timmy? Timmy’s not gone, too—is he? Can you see if he’s gone?’
“Because Marion was trapped in the backseat behind Timothy—for more than half an hour—she couldn’t see Timothy, who was directly in front of her. Ted, however, had a pretty good view of his younger son, who’d been knocked unconscious when his head went through the windshield; for a while, however, Timothy was still alive. Ted could see that Timmy was breathing, but Ted couldn’t see that the snowplow, as it had cut the car in two, had also cut off Timmy’s left leg at the thigh. While an ambulance and rescue crew struggled to disengage them all from the crumpled car, which had been accordioned between the snowplow and the station wagon, Timothy Cole bled to death from a severed femoral artery.
“For what seemed like twenty minutes—maybe it was less than five—Ted watched his younger son die. Since Ted was freed from the wreckage about ten minutes before the rescue workers were able to free Marion . . . Ted had broken only a few ribs; he was otherwise unhurt . . . Ted saw the paramedics remove Timmy’s body (but not Timmy’s left leg) from the car. The boy’s severed leg was still pinned to the front seat by the snowplow when the rescue workers finally extricated Marion from the backseat of the car. She knew that her Thomas was dead, but only that her Timothy had been taken from the wreckage—to the hospital, she hoped, for she kept asking Ted, ‘Timmy’s not gone, too—is he? Can you see if he’s gone?’
“But Ted was a coward when it came to answering that question, which he left unanswered—and would leave unanswered. He asked one of the rescue workers to cover Timmy’s leg with a tarpaulin, so Marion would not see it. And when Marion was safely outside the car . . . she was actually standing, and even limping around, although it would turn out that she had a broken ankle . . . Ted tried to tell his wife that her younger son, like her older son, was dead. He just never quite managed to say it. Before Ted could tell her, Marion spotted Timmy’s shoe. She couldn’t have known—she couldn’t have imagined —that her boy’s shoe was still attached to his leg. She thought it was just his shoe. And she said, ‘Oh, Ted, look—he’s going to need his shoe.’ And without anyone stopping her, she limped to the wreckage and bent down to pick up the shoe.
“Ted wanted to stop her, of course, but—talk about ‘turned to stone’—he felt at that moment absolutely paralyzed. He could not move, he couldn’t even speak. And so he allowed his wife to discover that her son’s shoe was still attached to a leg . That was when Marion began to realize that Timothy was gone, too. And that . . .” Ted Cole said, in his fashion, “that is the end of the story.”
“Get out of here,” Eddie told him. “This is my room, at least for one more night.”
“It’s almost morning,” Ted told the boy. He opened one curtain so that Eddie could see the faint beginning of a dead-looking light.
“Get out of here,” Eddie repeated.
“Just don’t think that you know me, or Marion,” Ted said. “You don’t know us—you don’t know Marion, especially.”
“Okay, okay,” Eddie said. He saw that the bedroom door was open; there was the familiar dark-gray light from the long hall.
“It was after Ruth was born, before Marion said anything to me,” Ted continued. “I mean,